What Celebs Actually Left The Country After Trump's Win?

Ever since the first time Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, celebrities have vowed to leave the U.S. to flee what they see as oppressive policies. The trend picked back up when he won a second time in 2024. While many prominent figures didn’t follow through on their promises, some did. Ellen DeGeneres, Sophie Turner, Minnie Driver, America Ferrera, and Lena Dunham are among the celebs who turned their backs on the country they previously called home because of its fractured political landscape.

It is no coincidence that many of those who felt compelled to leave the U.S. are women. Trump’s policies that target women’s rights have been criticized at home and abroad, with Human Rights Watch predicting the scenario will be even grimmer during his second term. Other reasons celebrities gave for wanting to leave included the president’s attacks on other minorities, like his stances on immigration, the Black community, and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.

Cher, whose son Chaz Bono is trans, has expressed a desire to move to protest Trump and his fellow Republicans’ anti-trans bills. “I almost got an ulcer the last time [he was president],” she told The Guardian in 2023. “If he gets in, who knows? This time I will leave.” It is unclear whether she is planning to keep her promise, as she was gushing about her Malibu mansion nearly a month after Trump was elected. But many others have — and they began taking the necessary steps well ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Ellen DeGeneres walked her talk. In November 2024, DeGeneres and her wife, Portia de Rossi, moved to the U.K. and reportedly put their Montecito home for sale. “[She’s] never coming back,” a source told The Wrap. The couple had been looking for properties in the English countryside for some time, but the 2024 election inspired them to move permanently. “[They were] very disillusioned,” an insider told TMZ, referring to the electoral defeat of Kamala Harris, whom DeGeneres and de Rossi endorsed.

That’s when they decided they needed “to get the hell out,” the source added. DeGeneres and de Rossi purchased a $18 million farmhouse in Cotswolds, about 90 miles northwest of London. In an early December Instagram post, DeGeneres celebrated her and de Rossi’s anniversary with a selfie of the two (seen above) in their new home. “So happy we get to travel and explore the world together in the next 20 years, and looking forward to our first snowy Christmas,” she wrote in the caption.

She also used the opportunity to reassure her followers amid the November 2024 floods in southern England. “P.S. for those of you concerned, our UK farmhouse did NOT flood,” she wrote. While the couple seems to be enjoying their new experience, not everything is perfect. DeGeneres and de Rossi’s new neighbors have raised issues with their plans to build an extension, arguing it could increase flood risk and disturb nearby Roman ruins, the Daily Mail reported. 

Sophie Turner left the U.S. and returned to her native U.K. in 2024. But Donald Trump’s victory was just the final straw after years of dissatisfaction with American politics and the growing embrace of far-right ideologies. Turner had wanted to leave the U.S. for a long time. The “Game of Thrones” star moved to Los Angeles in 2019, the year she married Joe Jonas. After becoming a mother to two girls, Turner’s feelings about living in the U.S. changed.

Turner worried that the political landscape that took hold of the U.S. following Trump’s 2016 win would create an unhealthy environment for her daughters to grow up in. “The gun violence, Roe v. Wade being overturned … Everything just kind of piled on. After the Uvalde [school] shooting, I knew it was time to get the f*** out of there,” she told Harper’s Bazaar U.K. in 2024. She took the 2022 school shooting especially hard.

“I couldn’t fathom being a mother of one of those children knowing that this was something your country could fix, that they’d rather have rights to guns than give kids a right to life,” she told British Vogue earlier in the year. Following Turner’s divorce from Jonas in September 2024, she finally made the move. “I’m so happy to be back. It felt as if my life was on pause until I returned to England … I was away for so long,” she said in the Harper’s Bazaar profile. “

Minnie Driver spent more than half of her life in Los Angeles, but she put an end to that chapter ahead of the election. In 2024, the British actor made London her home base, though she still maintains roots in the Golden State. “Living in California, you are somewhat insulated. But do you want to go and live in a bubble?” she told The Times. However, living in the U.S. became unsustainable not just because of Donald Trump.

For her, it was the support for what he represents that weighed heavy. “The revelation of the 70 million people who really quite like a bit of a racist attitude and non-existent immigration policies and dismantling the environmental agencies,” she added. “And they were always there; they weren’t created by him. He’s just a symptom, and now they’ve got a mascot.” While she is happy to be back home, the “Good Will Hunting” actor still feels a strong connection to her adopted land. “I identify as a Californian,” she said.

Trump’s second electoral victory seemingly hit Driver harder than his first win. A year after the 2016 election, she acquired American citizenship and shared her love for the country. “I’ll tell you what, I became a duel [sic] citizen on Friday. I have never been so proud to be an Anglo-American,” she tweeted in December 2017, when the Democratic candidate Doug Jones defeated his Trump-backed rival in the heated Senate special election in Alabama. 

In 2024, America Ferrera also started looking for a more suitable lifestyle abroad. In November, the “Barbie” actor was spotted looking at a private school in a South West London borough popular with celebs. “She was seen there at the open day and appeared very happy with what she saw,” a source told Hello!. “It’s a school with a lot of celebrity children at it so her kids would fit in very well.” Ferrera, who shares a son and a daughter with husband Ryan Piers Williams, reportedly believes the U.S. is no longer an ideal place to raise a family.

Donald Trump’s win over Kamala Harris helped her make up her mind. “America is sick that Donald Trump is President again,” a source told the Daily Mail in November. “She is devastated that Kamala lost. She thought the country she lived in was better than that.” While she wants Sebastian and Lucia to grow up under better policies, she won’t cut all ties with her native country. “She is going to continue to have a presence in the US for work purposes and to fight for Latinas and women, but she will be overseas for family and to benefit her kids’ education,” the insider explained.

Throughout the presidential race, Ferrera actively campaigned for Harris. The “Ugly Betty” star highlighted the former vice president’s support for Latino civil and human rights as well as abortion access and women’s rights. 

Lena Dunham started talking about leaving the U.S. when Donald Trump ran in 2016, per The Hollywood Reporter. While she didn’t keep her promise to move to Canada after his win, she slowly left the country over the next few years and eventually settled in London. The U.K. wasn’t a random pick, as Dunham’s husband, Luis Felber, hails from there. She has zero regrets. “You don’t feel that you are being in any way hemmed in by other people’s perceptions,” she told The New Yorker in 2024.

Dunham was never shy about discussing the myriad ways Trump’s election affected her. She even previously blamed him for the weight loss she experienced in 2017. “Donald Trump became president and I stopped being able to eat food,” she said on “The Howard Stern Show” (via Entertainment Weekly). “Everyone’s been asking like, ‘What have you been doing?’ And I’m like, ‘Try soul-crushing pain and devastation and hopelessness and you, too, will lose weight.'”

Despite feeling comfortable across the pond, the “Girls” creator kept New York close to her heart. “I miss my city, my family, my friends and neighbors and the small business owners who I interact with every single day,” she captioned an April 2020 Instagram post to showcase her support when NYC became the American epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I miss walking down the street and the fact that there’s never a day I don’t see something or someone I want to write about.”